


Between Love and Alibis

by tsukara



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, Masturbation, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 22:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/324957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukara/pseuds/tsukara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her orders start out simple, until they turn out not so simple. Or: "Ceiling Rukia is watching you mastubate"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between Love and Alibis

**Author's Note:**

> This is all Arcadia's fault. We're all happily going to hell together, yes.

"Keep an eye on him." Those were her orders. Nothing too alarming, at first. Just the sort of thing one would expect from a power hierarchy wary of a boy who had up-tilted and over-turned nearly everything about the orderly world of the Seireitei that Aizen himself hadn't.

But when the orders changed ever so slightly--'watch him', now--she knew quite well something was up. She would have known without the hint of a look her captain gave her, when those orders came up in discussion. True, the blindside he had thrown her right after, with that offer of a promotion, had side-tracked her thoughts temporarily, but no, she had said she would keep an eye on him, and she did. Often through whatever means expedient, the badge or a subordinate or some Twelfth Division technology, but occasionally in person too.

It wasn't often, of course. Even less frequently after her promotion. But still, once a month or so, she found herself back in the living world, Japan, Karakura Town, standing on a utility pole, watching a boy who couldn't know she was even there. More than simply 'didn't', of course. Her orders were to be neither seen nor noticed, even by the many residents of that strange town with the ability to see spirits. But importantly and especially not by any of those considered close friends of one Kurosaki Ichigo.

Rukia asked Captain Ukitake once why they didn't simply send a Second Division squad member--stealth being important, and all that. His answer--she knew both the town and the boy, so clearly she was the most sensible choice--was half obfuscation, and Rukia understood that too. Ichigo was not the only one being observed. It was her as well. After all, with her station as a member of one of the four noble clans, her promotion, and, oh yes, her close ties with the boy in question, those all threw the suspicion onto her as well.

Yet still she went. Sat on a light pole and outside on his front wall and, when she grew a little bolder and more sure (and sadder, at the same token) that he could not even sense her presence now, in his room, watching him as he went about the thousand mundane things of the life of an ordinary boy. Homework, playing around on his guitar, reading those strange English plays of his. Even, once or twice, when she had misjudged the time, while he was sleeping, though she never stayed long on those occasions.

She took to coming down in through the ceiling, when she entered, because every time she stepped through the wall or came in the window, or even glanced inside the little, dust-gathering closet, there was the ghost of memory at her back, like the remnant of a touch or the tingle of a phantom limb.

Rukia knew, knew completely, that he couldn't see her, couldn't even sense her presence, and yet... And yet...

"Rukia."

And yet, it was her name on his lips, she was sure of it, even as she slipped through the solid ceiling like the ghost she was. Her heart felt like it had lodged in her throat, fluttering with hope she shouldn't have. "Ichigo?" she asked, almost crashing through the ceiling to the floor in her half-hope, half-fear rush. How could he-- he didn't-- _he couldn't--_

Finally what she was seeing registered with a jolt, her sinking, hopeful heart counter-weight to her rising, crimson shame (tinged, after the initial shock had faded somewhat, with the faintest shade of desire, for to murmur _her_ name, of all others, in this state, well...). Even Rukia, who had grown up in a slum where bodies and their trade were commonplace enough to not faze her anymore, was fascinated by the boy--no, man, she corrected herself absently--sitting before her on his bed, with a side of him she had literally never seen before on display, his hand fisted around it, his head down, his breathing rough and panting. And still the edge of her name on his tongue.

Rukia knew she should leave, turn around, go _now_. It was impolite, a gross intrusion of his privacy, in so many ways. It had no bearing on what she was required to report to her superiors on.

But it had been her name. It was her name still lingering in the air as he worked himself, even those small strokes quick and dynamic, like everything about the way he moved.

She gasped when he came, almost silent and everywhere at once, unaware before that moment she'd been holding her own breath. And before he could do anything else, she fled, fled the room, the house, the world, and didn't stop until she was through the senkaimon and at the gates of the estate where the servants would not question even flushed cheeks or a pounding heart, having far too much discretion for that.

The shame was a stone in her breast. She should not have seen that, she knew, should not have intruded in on such a private moment. But the fact remained that she had, and she had lingered, and if her name from his mouth explained her folly it did not excuse it. And so she kept watching him, kept doing her duty, even as he sought the return of his powers and Rukia silently cheered him on, she did what she was supposed to.

And if she never told another soul about that one particular evening, between his training and the trouble he inevitably found with his false allies and friends old and new, well, that was understandable, wasn't it? After all, no one else had been called by name.


End file.
